Computing devices and communication networks can be utilized to exchange information. In a common application, a computing device can request content from another computing device via a communication network. For example, a user at a personal computing device can utilize a software browser application, typically referred to as a browser, to request a web page from a server computing device via the internet. In such embodiments, the user computing device can be referred to as a client computing device and the server computing device can be referred to as a content provider.
The communication networks utilized to exchange information can vary widely in availability, coverage area, bandwidth, and the like. Some networks, such as cellular networks like 3G, are available nationwide. Other networks, such as WLANs and other WiFi-based networks, have much smaller coverage areas and may be incompatible with WiFi-based networks elsewhere. The bandwidth on such WiFi networks, however, can be many times greater than the bandwidth available through cellular networks.
Users can connect to such communication networks to request and interact with network content, such as web sites and pages. One or more requests for web pages or other network content may form the basis for predicting which web pages and network content will be requested in the future. The predictions can be used to cache the predicted content before it is requested to minimize latency and other network delays when the content is requested.
From the perspective of a user operating a client computing device, a user experience can be defined in terms of the performance and latencies associated with obtaining network content over a communication network. Latencies and performance limitations of any of the above processes may diminish the user experience. Additionally, latencies and inefficiencies may be especially apparent on computing devices with limited resources, such as processing power, memory or network connectivity such as netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and the like.